The newspaper felt like a lead weight in Harsh's hands. The bold, triumphant headline was a lie. It wasn't a victory; it was a declaration of all-out war. He had poked the tiger, and now the tiger knew his scent.
Dr. Desai's face was grim. "You cannot stay here," he said, his voice low and urgent. "They will be tearing the city apart looking for the source. My clinic will be one of the first places they check. They know I treated you. They know I was your father's friend."
The safe harbor had become a trap. Harsh's mind, still reeling from the adrenaline of the heist and the shock of the headline, kicked into a cold, sharp survival mode. He had to move. But to where? The docks? The chawl? They were death sentences.
"The one place they won't look," Harsh muttered, the idea forming with a terrifying logic. "Is right under his nose."
Desai's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"
"The shipyard. They'll be evacuating, scrambling, trying to hide evidence. It'll be chaos. The last place they'll expect me to be is inside the one place I just destroyed." It was insane. It was suicidal. But in its insanity lay a perverse kind of safety.
He didn't wait for the doctor's approval. He grabbed a dirty blanket from the cot and a half-empty bottle of disinfectant from a shelf. He poured the liquid on the blanket, the sharp smell filling the small room.
"What are you doing?" Desai asked, alarmed.
"Changing my smell," Harsh said, rubbing the stinking blanket over his clothes, his hair, his cast. He had to erase any trace of the clinic, of medicine, of cleanliness. He had to become part of the shipyard's grime again.
He slipped out the back door of the clinic just as the first black car pulled up on the street out front. He didn't look back. He moved through the narrow gullies, a stinking, ragged shadow, his broken hand clutched to his chest.
The journey to the shipyard was a nightmare odyssey. The city was buzzing with the news. Radios blared from tea stalls, headlines screamed from every newspaper stand. Treason. Swami. Agni. The name Venkat Swami, once a whispered myth, was now on everyone's lips.
He saw the first signs of the empire's panic at a distance. Police cars, their lights flashing, were parked not at the shipyard gate, but blocking the road leading to it. They weren't there to raid it; they were there to seal it off. To contain the scandal. Swami's reach extended that far.
But Harsh didn't need the roads. He used the same path through the scrapyard, the reek of the disinfectant-covered blanket masking his scent from the dogs he could hear barking in the distance. The fence behind the generator was still torn. He squeezed through, back into the belly of the beast.
The shipyard was in controlled chaos. The low, industrial hum was gone, replaced by the shouted orders of foremen and the revving of truck engines. They weren't trying to hide the machinery anymore; they were trying to move it. Teams of men were hastily crating up the half-assembled guidance systems, loading them onto waiting container trucks. It was an evacuation.
He kept his head down, mimicking the frantic energy of the other workers. He grabbed a clipboard that had been dropped on the ground and walked with purpose, as if he had a destination. No one looked twice at another grimy, stressed-out worker.
He saw Mr. Dalal, his usually impeccable suit jacket gone, his sleeves rolled up, shouting into a radio. His face was pale, his voice strained. The cool, calculating administrator was gone, replaced by a man trying to plug a leaking dam with his bare hands.
And then he saw him.
Venkat Swami.
He stood near his black car, a still point in the storm of activity. He wasn't shouting. He wasn't gesturing. He was just watching, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked… calm. The newspaper headline, the scandal, the imminent ruin of his empire—none of it seemed to touch him. His expression was not one of anger, but of cold, terrifying calculation.
Harsh froze, his blood turning to ice. This was not the reaction of a defeated man. This was the reaction of a man who had already pivoted, who was already three moves ahead.
Swami's eyes scanned the yard, and for a heart-stopping second, they passed over Harsh. There was no recognition, only a flat, dismissive assessment of another useless cog in his disintegrating machine. The anonymity was a gift, a testament to his perfect disguise.
Swami turned and said something to a man standing beside him—a man Harsh hadn't noticed before. He was tall, wore a simple police inspector's uniform, and had a face that was both weary and brutally honest.
Inspector Sawant.
Harsh's breath caught in his throat. The honest cop. He was here. But he wasn't leading a raid. He was talking quietly with Swami. There was no confrontation. It looked like… a conversation.
Swami nodded at something Sawant said, then gestured toward the trucks being loaded. Sawant's face was grim, but he nodded back. An understanding. A negotiation.
The truth crashed down on Harsh with the force of a physical blow.
The exposure wasn't the end. It was a controlled demolition. Swami was sacrificing the shipyard, the project, to save himself. He was handing Sawant a victory—a big, public, career-making victory—in exchange for something. For the scandal to stop here. For the investigation to go no higher. For certain names to be left out of the report.
Swami would lose a limb, but the body of his empire would survive. He would fade back into the shadows, richer and more powerful than ever, while the public cheered Inspector Sawant as a hero.
Harsh's proof, his great victory, had just become a bargaining chip in a deal he never knew was being made.
He watched, helpless, as Sawant walked away, barking orders to his constables. They weren't there to arrest anyone. They were there to oversee the evacuation. To secure the evidence… for a future that would never come.
The grenade he had thrown had been caught and defused. The tiger was wounded, but it was still the tiger, and it had just made a deal with the hunters.
Harsh leaned against a crate, the strength draining from his legs. He had risked everything. He had gambled with Priya's life, with Sharma's son's life. And it had all been for nothing.
The game was still being played. And he was still a pawn on the board, his move already anticipated and neutralized.
He was still trapped inside the lion's den. And now the lion knew the hunt was over, and it was time to clean out the vermin.
He had to get out. Now.
(Chapter End)